Table Of ContentJean-PieVroryee r
It'Csr azy
How Many Things
Don'tE xist
SelecteWdr itings
It's Crazy
How Many
Things
Don't Exist
Selected Writings of
Jean-PierVroey er
Translated from the French
"ReicMho,d ed 'emplwoais"t ranslated
byK enK nabbu ndetrh et it"lRee ich,
How toU se;t"h eo thetre xtwse re
translactoeldlo arbativbeylI ys aac
CroninR,o geGrr egoiarned,L inda
Lanphear.
Published by Aragorn Moser
Layout by Leona Benton
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Cruel Hospice 2015
licensed under creative commons
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Reich: How to Use 1
Non-Well-Founded Set Theory:
Putting an End to Marx's
Reductionism 19
The Economy is Only an
Ideology in Marx's Sense 25
My Goal in Life 60
What I am Satisfied With (1997) 65
There is No Society of the Spectacle 69
The Parthian Shot 101
Introduction
Who is Jean-Pierre Voyer?
French social thinkers don't have the best
reputation in America. Typically they are seen
as humorless, self-important, elitist intellectuals
whose purpose is to tell the world not only what
to believe, but what to do with those beliefs. We
know Jean-Pierre Voyer, and he is none of those
things. He has worked as a cab driver, a plumber
and software programmer/entrepreneur. He
never attended a university, and he is completely
self-taught. He has a wicked sense of humor and
all of his writings develop and make a critical
analysis of his initial ideas. He has gone on record
as saying that one of the goals of theory is to say
what does not exist, in particular, the "economy".
His provocative assertions made him many
enemies, most of the time because the latter
would rather maintain the status quo on essential
questions rather than enter into a critical debate.
ii
In his search for an answer to the question: "Why
don't people revolt?" he leaves no stone unturned.
He is destructively funny and provocative when
addressing trendy thinkers, politicians and
politics. He puts his life where his mouth is. He
is unique not only among French social thinkers,
but among radical thinkers everywhere.
Voyer is the most original thinker to come
out of the post-1968 movement in Europe, so
original in fact that he developed a profound
critique of the failures and inadequacies of
Marx and of the Situationists, which led to his
estrangement from Debord. What is crucial is
not that Voyer and Debord stopped talking, but
that Voyer continues to think and write about the
modem world as no one else does.
Voyer is the author of six books and
numerous articles published in France by
Editions Champ-Libre, by Editions de la Nuit
and by Editions Anonymes. His site contains
all his writings: thousands of pages of research,
correspondence, and theoretical and polemical
work. His work is ferociously Hegelian in its
method. He writes-about modem slavery, the
iii
tyranny of the commodity, communication, the
movement of thought in society, the naivete of
the materialist conception of this world-with a
clarity and wit that would be reassuring except
that they are also extremely demanding of the
reader.
Selected Excerpts from Voyer's Writings
The following excerpts from Voyer's writings
beckon to translators who can help bring more
of his work to an English-language audience.
Fortunately An Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Misery of the People will appear
next year in a LBC Books edition.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Misery of the People, Editions Champ Libre 1975
"The scandal of Marxism and of Situationism
consists simply in claiming that the thought of
Marx and the thought of the Situationists are true
iv
while the enemies of Marx and the enemies of
the Situationists are still standing, as if the truth
of a thought were not a practical question, a
question of its power and of the annihilation of its
enemies. In fact, Marxism is the victory of Stalin's
'thought,' that is, the victory of his police."
Review of Contemporary Prehistory, 1982
"According to realism, it is correct and sensible to
affirm that a reality exists and that it is independent
of the human spirit. Moreover, according to this
current of thought, the human spirit can progress
in the direction of ever-increasing knowledge of
this reality." (Bernard d'Espagnat, In Search of
The Real, A Physicist's Perspective� Gauthier
Villars, 1979.)
Obviously, we are in complete disagreement
with materialist realism, first on the nature of
knowledge and then on all of the questions
stemming from it, beginning with the question
of reality. For materialist realism, knowledge is
reduced to individual consciousness. For us, on
the contrary, knowledge is not the knowledge or
v
thought of an individual, it is a world, it is the
movement of thought in the world. Understood
in this way, knowledge constitutes reality itself.
It follows quite clearly that knowledge does not
refer to an external and independent reality but to
itself. So knowledge understood in the materialist
realist sense as thought or consciousness of an
individual necessarily refers to knowledge as a
world. Thought, therefore, necessarily refers to
the movement of thought in the world.
However, it might seem that we agree with
materialist realism on two points since (1) we are
of the opinion, along with Hegel, that a reality
exists and that it is exterior to the consciousness
and the thought of the impoverished individual
and, (2) we are of the opinion, against Kant,
that reality is knowable. But this agreement
is a simple appearance because we are totally
opposed to materialist realism as to the meaning
it gives to words, just as we are totally opposed
to materialist realism as to the meaning it gives
to the words 'communism' and 'revolution.'
A reality exists but not as conceived of by
materialist realism. The reality of this realism is
Description:Jean-Pierre Voyer, has worked as a cab driver, a plumber and software programmer/entrepreneur. He never attended a university, and he is completely self-taught. He has a wicked sense of humor and all of his writings develop and make a critical analysis of his initial ideas. He has gone on record as
